A Short Story
by Rhydeble
Summary: Edward Elric really thought his plan to escape Gluttony's artificial Gate by opening the real Gate would work. And it did, sort of. Except instead of finding himself back in Amestris, he landed in a strangely advanced city called Brockton Bay, containing girls with giant dog Chimeras, souls bound to giant metal blenders, and a very trustworthy Blonde.
1. Chapter 1

**Monstrous Dog Chimera**

Light, cold yet singed stone, the noises of a city, cars in the distance. I stood up, looking around to see where we'd landed, where Envy was. Our temporary alliance wasn't going to hold up now that we were free from Gluttony's stomach.

"Ling, you there?" I asked as the glare of the sun blinded me while I was adapting to the light.  
No answer, not even a pained groan.

Metal hand above my eyes to shield me from the sun, I looked around to see neither Ling nor Envy's massive form. Instead, there was just a city, and the sound of gulls screaming in the distance, marked by a great amount of cars. Gulls, that meant the ocean, which meant…

Wherever I was, it wasn't in Amestris, which was land-locked. Aerugo perhaps? That would be problematic, given my status as a State Alchemist. Weren't we at war with Aruego? Or was there an armistice I'd forgotten about?

I took a closer look at the city, trying to place it. Around me were brick buildings, several floors tall, with large windows that only sometimes held glass, and were more often than not boarded up. Cracks went through the brickwork, and large metal containers filled with trash were scattered around.

In a circle around me, the ground was scorched, presumably from my arrival, though a nearby dumpster was connected to the scorchmarks, and smoke was still coming from its mangled wreck. I'd been lucky I hadn't landed there. On the sides of the street, there were tall metal lighting poles, electrical rather than based on oil or torches. The street, or rather the alleyway, I'd landed in was largely empty, though in the distance I could see…

No, those couldn't be automobiles, right? They were moving far too fast, and they didn't look like anything like the models I recognized. Too sleek, with far too little noise for their velocity.

"Ling! Can you hear me!" I yelled out to no avail, walking through the area. In the distance, a handful of shabbily dressed people scurried away into one of the abandoned buildings.

There was paint on some of the walls, I noticed. Quickly drawn and of varying quality, it looked Xing-ese in nature, though the architecture didn't fit with their style. Further off, I could see what looked like smoke, and intermittent noises.

Reminded by the people in the distance, I looked at my own clothes. A makeshift splint for my arm, a torn up shirt still half-wet from the blood-like fluids of the world inside Gluttony's stomach, and a set of trousers that was much the same.

If I was going to figure out where the hell I'd landed, how to get back home, and how to bring my brother's body back, I'd have to figure out a way to blend in, and find a place to stay for now. ***  
I clapped my hands together, my arms forming a circle as my mind provided the necessary detail for the alchemical circle, then placed them on the wall. At once, the stone restructured itself, half-crumbled bricks suddenly providing a smooth and solid surface. Another transmutation, and a pile of wood transformed into a simple but stable ladder, that allowed me to reach the entirety of the wall. Useful, because I couldn't quite reach all the way up the side of the large warehouse, due to its height. Then, I took out the cans of paint that a few teenagers had dropped upon spotting my metal limbs, and wrote down what I knew of this place. The first and most important point, I painted at the top, in large wall-filling letters.

 ** _'I am far away from Amestris.'_**

That much was clear from my Alchemy. In order to gather the energy required for a transmutation, Alchemy tapped the tectonic plates beneath the Alchemist, and the energy patterns I could sense here were completely different from those found in the different regions of Amestris. All in all, Truth really had it out for me, though it was still to be seen if this city was the fire to Gluttony's frying pan.

Below that, I wrote information of lesser importance, in an effort to neatly condense my discoveries so far.

 _'The locals speak Amestrian, though the accent is strange, and the writing is different.'  
'The city, Brockton Bay, has a population of at least a hundred-thousand.'  
'The city is part of a larger nation called by different names, some of them acronyms.'  
'There is a large amount of poverty in the city.'  
'There is a strong military presence in the city.'  
'The technology is, on average, more advanced than that of Amestris.'_

 _'There are different racial groups living in the city, some conflict between them exists.'_

And then, last but most definitely not least, I added the final sentence.

 _'Someone, or something, is setting off strange explosions throughout the city.'_

I stepped back, looking at what I had. Not much, but a good beginning for half a day's work. It would help if I could find a library, or the local equivalent, but without understanding anything about the culture, it was difficult to know what would draw undue attention to me, and I didn't want to get into a fight with half the city by accident.

I did stuff like that on purpose often enough.

Exhausted, I walked back to the middle of the old warehouse. I'd cleaned it up as much as I could with a few quick transmutations, but the electricity wasn't working anymore, so I'd have to make do with daylight, which meant I didn't have to feel bad for wasting time sleeping.

I checked the couch again. I'd repaired most of it, but it wasn't exactly a good bed. Well, I'd slept on worse, and it would be important to catch a good night's sleep.

The barking kept getting worse. More of it, louder, deeper, and more desperate. People screaming in fear, rather than the enthusiasm I'd heard before. Something was going on, and while my makeshift bed was very attractive, I couldn't just lie back and sleep when people were getting hurt.

Standing up, I looked back at the red couch, and almost immediately reached a decision. One quick transmutation later, I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my brand new cloak, walked up to an empty wall, created a door, and left the darkness of the building for the dimly lit streets.

I could hear the mayhem properly now, just three buildings over and across the street. A great amount of cars were parked in the street, and screaming people were fleeing out of the building, several of them nursing wounded limbs as they did so.

I waited, observing as the torrent of people came to an end, then snuck forward, keeping myself close to the wall and out of the light as I did so.

Edging closer to the building, the telltale stench of a mixture of blood and sweat reached my nose. Curious, a quick look through the window told me all I needed to know.

Dog-fighting. The sick and twisted practice of making animals fight each other for human entertainment.

The building was centered around a makeshift arena, made out of crates and wooden boards. Cages were scattered around the border of the arena, some filled with terrified dogs, others empty, the inhabitants now lying still on the floor of the building.

In the middle of the arena, a young woman was sitting next to a monstrous Chimera, the beast's tail curled around the girl like a dog trying to protect it's puppy.

How had the beast been made? Most larger Chimeras turned out incredibly violent, but someone had made this one to protect the girl like it was a pet. And what were the component parts? I was pretty sure there was some dog in there, purely from behavior, but what about the spikes? The exposed muscles? Were these simply local animals I was unfamiliar with?

I walked in through the door, careful not to make too much noise as I approached, but the girl and her Chimera looked up in my direction immediately.

"I told you, NO MORE! Get the fuck out you Nazi Midget!" the girl screamed, standing up, the beast growling, placing itself between him and it's mistress.

"Who the hell did you just call an insignificantly small speck of dust you dog-fighting wretch!" I yelled back, rolling up the sleeves of my shirt as I got ready for a fight.

That pissed her off. The girl stood back as she gave a quick sharp whistle to her dog, then spoke while pointing. "Brutus! Attack!"

The Chimera pounced, It's massive bulk launching itself towards me deceptively fast, but not fast enough. Bringing my hands together, then placing them on the ground, I restructured the architecture of the room, placing a large stone wall between me and the beast.

Except, instead of crashing into it like I'd expected, the chimera's reflexes allowed it to quickly turn, the claws audibly tearing into the concrete of the building's floor as it changed direction.

Taking advantage of the few moments the distraction had still given me, I transmuted a blade onto my right hand, ready to defend myself as the beast came pouncing around the corner.

"Let's dance," I taunted, shifting into a low stance as it came at me, it's eyes wary for another stone wall raising from the ground. This time however, I didn't create a barrier, instead punching forwards with my fist, straight into the maw of the beast.

It was obviously surprised to find someone actually attacking it head on, the sharpened end of my arm scratching at the inside of its jaw, while the metal plating of the AutoMail would protect me from it's tee -crack!-

I kicked off against the ground, ripping my arm out of the beast's maw as it started chewing on the metal plating. "The hell kind of hellbeast are ya! How the hell did you just bite through all that metal!"

The Chimera, noticing my retreat, chewed on the remains of my AutoMail's armor for a bit, then spat them out, slowly walking towards me.

"Atta girl," I spoke, flexing the fingers of my arm, making sure everything was still functional. The armor, I could replace myself. The internal mechanisms however… Winry would be pissed, if I ever managed to find my way back.

My fingers still moved independently though, so no need to worry about that while a massive Chimera the size of a car was coming at me.

I glanced to the side, the makeshift barrier I'd made there still in place. The beast was strong, but not strong enough to break through it without effort, or it would've gone through instead of around.

A quick duck to the ground, and the concrete rose in a large circle around the monster dog, enclosing it in a large earth dome.

The Chimera however, jumped over the rim of its impending prison, crashing into the roof to do so as I lept back to dodge the creature's body on it's way down.

This wasn't working. It was too agile, bulky and intelligent to properly trap. What else? Could I try-

A foot caught me in the side and I folded over, throwing myself to the ground in a roll in order to escape and recover. I brought my hands together in a quick gesture, then placed a palm on the ground as my roll came to a halt, quickly building up a field of concrete spikes around me, buying time to recover.

"Heh, see you've joined the fight yourself, I can respect that," I told her, standing up as I wiped the dust from my duster.

"Don't recognize you," she mumbled.

"The name's Edward," I replied, taking care not to give her anything more identifiable, while people wouldn't immediately recognize my first name, the 'Fullmetal Alchemist' of Amestria was far more identifiable.

She made a face, an expression I couldn't quite identify? Surprise? Something else?

We were separated by a field of spiky concrete, and the Chimera had decided to stop attacking, so I took the time to take a look around. The floor of the arena had been torn up by our fight, and the ceiling had some noticeable damage where the Chimera had thrown itself against it to escape my trap, but it looked like the building's structural integrity was still holding up.  
"Rachel," she eventually replied.

"I gotta say, I didn't expect someone with the balls to actually fight herself to enjoy dogfighting."  
The girl got visibly angry again, showing teeth as the dog growled, unable to come to terms with the vileness of her own behavior, making animals fight against each other for her own amusement, except…

"Drat… you were breaking up this place, weren't you?" I stated more than I asked.  
She nodded.

"Ahhh. I see, sorry, my fault," I replied, completely embarrassed as I rubbed the back of my head.. I should've known that the girl with the giant dog-Chimera wouldn't be using it to fight against other dogs.

"So you're not a Nazi?" the girl asked, a hand-signal getting the dog to back off.

"Nazi?" I asked, hoping not to give myself away.

"Guys that did this," she replied, terse and to the point.

Right, so Nazis were a type of dogfighter? It wasn't a term I recognized, so something local then? As I thought about it, the Chimera's ears started perking up, and it's head looked around.

"More of these guys?" I asked, still happy about the large spikes separating the two of us.

"Protectorate, c'mon Brutus," she replied, as I started hearing a whining noise in the distance, rapidly coming closer. The girl turned away from me, grabbed the beast by a bone-ridge on its neck, and swung herself on top of it, quickly getting it to tear open the remaining cages of dogs on her way out.

"Something is wrong with that girl," I told myself as I followed her out of the building.

Protectorate sounded military, not the type of people I'd want to get involved with right now. I made my way back to my base, just a few buildings over, and used my ladder to climb up to the ceiling, creating a small peeping hole I could use to observe with my alchemy.

Two people arrived. One, a tall man in heavy armor that looked like a more advanced version of AutoMail covering his body, colored in blue and white. He carried a large Halberd, similarly styled to his armor. Besides him was a woman that reminded me of Lieutenant Hawkeye. Her hair was dark, and her face covered with a multicolored scarf, but she was wearing a uniform that was most definitely military in its styling, and she was carrying a rifle that, as I watched, she somehow transmuted into two separate pistols.

State Alchemists, or their local equivalent. Leaving had been the right thing to do, I couldn't afford to duke it out with two State Alchemists in my current state, especially not since these seemed to be the combat-capable types, rather than stuffy men in lab coats. However, their coming here and chasing off the girl with the Chimera, as well as their reaction to seeing the dogs inside of the building, told me that they weren't on either side of that conflict.

More data for the wall, though what I really needed was a map, or maybe some of the local money. 


	2. Chapter 2

**A Soul Bound to a Blender**

I looked at the strange object in my hands with suspicion, giving it a squeeze, a sniff, and a few more pokes. It didn't make any sense, unless they had some sort of local food-based Alchemy. Rice, meat, sauce and greens all merged together in some sort of strange bread bag. Like a crazy chimera made out of food instead of animals. It looked like it ought to be poisonous, but the rest of the people on the street seemed to like it, so I bit down anyway.

It was good, really good. Really, really good.

"You liking it, shorty?" the guy with the cart said as he put my coins in his wallet. I nodded to him. It was so good, I couldn't even bring myself to anger over him calling me a sprout.

The coins themselves… I hoped they wouldn't be discovered too quickly. It'd taken a while, but some sort of automated machine that took coins and a bit of Alchemy had allowed me to figure out how to transmute some petty cash from scrap metal, or at least something close enough to this place's coins that people wouldn't immediately notice. It wasn't nice, and in Amestris, it would be highly illegal, but a man needed to eat, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

I sat down on a bench in the park, finally feeling relaxed. This city was weird, the people were weirder, and even the parks were the weirdest, but these were foreigners, so that could all be forgiven, as long as they had good food. Which they had. Almost as good as Ishvallan stew, which was in a class of its own.

Hidden in plain sight, Alchemically repaired clothes and gloves covering my scratched up AutoMail, I looked around, watching the people in the park. They looked… normal enough, for how weird the city was turning out to be. Yes, most of them were obsessed with glowing rectangles that seemed to be some sort of communication device, yes, the fashion was completely ridiculous, and yes, these people had an obsession with jogging in the early morning. But even with all of that, they were still people.

Even with the continued bombings plaguing the city, life went on. Parents went shopping with their children, teenagers flirted like idiots, all those things. Everything was slightly different though. Small wagons to transport babies were quite popular, and I spotted several people rolling around with wheels strapped to their feet, or to a wooden plank. It was reassuring, knowing that someone eating breakfast on a bench in the park wouldn't immediately stand out as a foreign spy of some sort.

"Well, let's get going," I told myself, jumping up from the bench, trying to figure out where I'd have to go to get back to my hideout. The sun was just above the ocean in the East, so I had to go… "That way!" I pointed, moving to the North. Yes, I'd come here in a roundabout way, but I was pretty sure I'd have to go North to find my way back to the dilapidated area that was my temporary home.

Something was wrong. There were too few people around, too many cars hidden in nearby alleyways. Something was out of the ordinary, which probably meant something was wrong for me.

The same thing as before, the girl with the giant Chimera again? Or something else?

Only one way to find out. I walked up to a nearby wall, placing my hands against it to transmute a ladder into the concrete, then made my way up, turning it back into a smooth wall behind me. No need to give my presence away just yet.

Proper vantage point acquired, I looked around the city. There were several people a few buildings over, hidden under dish-like objects, next to small walls and other such things. Obviously hiding from anyone walking down the street, but clearly visible from behind. Not complete idiots, but I wouldn't exactly call them well-trained. They weren't wearing the uniforms I'd come to expect from the local military, or National Guard as I'd learned, either.

I smiled. This was going to be a fun little. I took a running start, setting my right leg on the floor just before the edge of the building, then using the mechanical strength of the AutoMail in my left leg, placed upon the small raise at the side of the roof, to launch myself forwards over the alleyway, dashing forwards and repeating the manoeuvre several times. Then, as I came closer, I slowed down, stepping on my tippy toes as I crept up on one of the watching men. He was bald, with a tattoo inked on the back of his head in the local script. He had one of those strange communication devices on the ground next to him, and a set of binoculars in his hands which he used to screen the streets down below.

I snuck up behind him, tapping on his shoulder. "Hey, since you've been doing such a good job, I have something for you."

The man turned around in surprise, asking "what?"

"This!" I replied, a metal fist meeting his face, dropping him to the ground. A quick transmutation later, and he was bound to the roof itself, unable to call for help. I looked at his device. How did it work? Picking it up, I tapped the screen like I'd seen people do before, and it lit up, showing a set of different scribbles, presumably names, and a little slider at the bottom that was currently turned to red.

"Lion four checking in, nothing here," a voice spoke, and one of the little scribbles had the button it was on light up green.

So it was a communications thing. Which meant…

I kept it in my hand, and moved forwards to a different watcher, one building over. A quick Alchemy assisted jump, and I snuck up behind him. Then, I took another look at the device, and used my finger sneaking up from behind, then looking at the device, turning the slider from red to green with a flick of my finger. "I think he's behind you," I said, watching one of the names, presumably the device's former owner, light up green as I did so.

Just as I'd expected, this man's device replicated the sounds. Then, the moment the guy turned-

"And that's two," I noted, metal fist hitting face once again as my words were repeated on the man's device. Right… they'd know I was here now. Not my smartest plan so far. I clapped my hands together, deforming the building beneath me to launch me towards my next target. He panicked, this one seeing me coming, and grabbed for a gun, but I landed before he could get a proper grip on it, and a transmutation later dropped him through the floor, crashing down while I caught his weapon with a stone tendril.

I looked back at the device I'd stolen. Ten names, meaning seven to go. Six if one of them was supporting from the back.

Shots were fired, and I tucked the device into my belt before I launched myself through the air again, this time throwing myself through a broken window somewhere below one of the guards. Landing inside, I could see that the building was mostly abandoned, and a second later, a man dropped through the ceiling in front of me, a look of surprise on his face, and therefore still conscious.

I grabbed him by the collar, pushing him against the wall with my meager weight, hoping my metal arm would intimidate enough to keep him locked up.

"What do you want?" I asked, moving up close, staring straight into his eyes with a look I normally reserved for homunculi and people who insulted my height.

"What… the fuck?!" the man replied.

"I said, who are you working for!"

The man just looked at me in confusion.

"How many of you! Or do I need to beat you up some more!"

"Hey hey, no need for that, just tell me what to answer first shorty! I can't ans-" His speech was cut off by a metal knee in his stomach.

"Don't call me a midget!" I yelled, throwing him to the floor. "You're the one the size of a-"

Metal grinded on concrete below, tearing it apart. "What the?"

"Heh, now you've done it," the man groaned, holding his stomach in pain. "No way your lil' tricks are gonna work on the boss, he's gonna kill ya."

"A boss huh?" I asked, smashing my hands together, transforming the steel of my right arm into a blade. "Guess that means I don't have to deal with the small fry anymore."

The tearing sound continued, moving through the building. Was he really going to… no, his subordinate was still in here, he wouldn't…

The building creaked below me, and I leaped out of the window I'd come in through. Sure, they might have been my enemies, but I had no idea why they were even here, and I didn't want to kill them or anything like that.

I landed on the ground outside, dropping one story and rolling to break the fall, coming up again to see a monster worse than most anything I'd seen in Amestris, with the exception of… Envy's true form? Gluttony when he opened his second mouth? Either way, this thing was terrifying.

He, or maybe it, looked like a human Chimera. A combination between a wolf and a man, only instead of fur and fangs, he was made out of whirling metal. Or was he like Al, a soul bound to a piece of metal, but using some sort of mechanical death-machine instead of a suit of armor? Or worse, a homunculus...

Either way, it turned around, the front, if you could call it that, looking at me.

"I'm guessing I'm who you guys were looking for?" I asked, readying my fighting stance as the metal unfolded further, and a shape vaguely like the torso of a man appeared out of it.

"No mask?" he asked, his face mostly steel cabling where the muscles should have been, the voice raspy and deep.

"The name's Edward Elric," I replied. "And you are?"

"Hookwolf, in case you didn't recognize me. What you and that Bitch did… I liked that place."

"Heh, so you're the monster responsible for that, literally!" I replied. "How about a real fight? One between people, who can actually choose to fight it?"

"Heh, you look like a child, but you speak like a warrior!" the man replied, a strange smile on his wicked face. "Can't say I have a problem with that. Men! Stand down. We're doing this old-school!"

He leapt forwards on four legs, the torso melding back into his bulky body as I created a wall of stone to meet him.

Steel and stone struck together, sending sparks flying as Hookwolf tore through the obstacle, only to meet my second strike.

I'd done some research in the past few days, and as it turned out, even poor, run-down areas like this one had sewage and electricity running beneath the streets. And now that I knew what to expect, and where to find everything, I could easily redirect the underground pipes involved in the system. In other words, it was time to figure out if metal wolves also smelled like wet dog.

A blast of water smashed into Hookwolf, throwing him into the air even as he'd broken through the first barrier. Flying into the sky, the man was helpless to act as I prepared my third strike, a fist of stone inspired by the famous Armstrong Alchemy smashing into him as he was unable to dodge.

Hookwolf crashed to the ground, metal bending, but not breaking. He was in pain, but it didn't look like he was actually hurt. This was going to require more than just a few simple tricks, but how could I take him down? Stone bindings wouldn't hold the man, at least not for long. Unless…

I took a few steps away from my opponent, my back against the wall as he stood up again, whirling blades on his arms spinning around menacingly as metal hooks reached forwards out of his core with a mind of their own, ready to tear apart my flesh.

Hookwolf stormed forwards faster than he had any right to be, a long sharp hook of steel lashing out in front of him. I didn't dodge, instead grasping it with one hand, the sharp metal cutting into even my automail's metal exterior as my other hand reached out behind me, touching a metal pipe that reached up all the way to the ceiling, designed to carry away rainwater into the sewers below. At my command, the metal tore away from the wall, twisting around Hookwolf, and while he tried to pull himself away from my grasp, he obviously hadn't expected me to have a metal arm that could hold up to his onslaught and take hold of his appendage.

Steel twisted into steel, and I could see his body work slowly work on the obstruction, almost like it was absorbing the material into itself.

Didn't matter. I released his arm, and transmuted a hole into the wall behind me. I dashed into the warehouse, enemy hot on my heels as I got ready to steal my opponents' plan. He stalked after me, enjoying the fight as I replied with transmuted steel beams in his path. Two long steel appendages launched at me. One, I kicked away with my left leg, the other I jumped over with a backflip, pushing of with an arm as I transmuted another temporary barrier between us.

"I'm guessing that telling you that that entire thing yesterday was a mistake wouldn't exactly work, would it?" I asked.

"What, chickening out already? I'm going to kill you for that!" the man replied in anger, reforming the torso as he tore through my barrier and blocked a stone fist I'd launched at him effortlessly, the shrapnel bouncing off of his body.

"It's just, y'know, neither of us have something to gain here," I replied as I took a large T bar and slung it around the man. My temporary base was probably already compromised, and it wasn't like his dog-fighting ring would come back if he took me out. Plus, I didn't want to die.

"That's where you're wrong kiddo!" he replied, taking a few seconds to saw right through the steel. "Reputation, revenge, the joy of the fight! Are these not worthy reasons for battle?"

"For a life and death fight?" I replied, opening a hole between the man, watching as he crashed into the basement below. "None of those are good reasons to kill someone!"

Steel crashed against concrete below me, and I could see shards fly up into the air as Hookwolf climbed back up, so I took a few steps away. By striking at Hookwolf with metal instead of concrete, I'd taken out most of the support pillars of this building. Just one more to go, and it'd come crashing down on top of him, giving me the time to escape into the city.

I stepped around the corner, put my hands to the last pillar, got ready to transmute it, and heard the sound of someone cocking a gun.

"Hookwolf gets all worked up for fights like this," a man with neat blonde hair, a black breastplate and a V-shaped mask said, aiming a gun at my face. He stood about 20 feet away, a girl in tight red clothes behind him, her hair covering one of her eyes. "Doesn't mean we have to play by his rules though."

"Not gonna shoot me?" I asked. Yes, his weapon was trained on me, but he hadn't fired yet, which meant something. If only I knew what.

"Not yet," he replied, shaking his head. "I have some questions for you first young man."

"Such as?" I replied, keeping myself from acting stupidly. I wasn't that young, he just said that because, well...

"Who are you working for? And why are you stupid enough to go around maskless, telling everyone your name?"

"Well, that's easy," I replied, eyeing the surroundings. It'd be risky, what with the pistol, but I didn't really have a choice here did I?

Just as the man furrowed his brow beneath his mask, I completed my transmutation, using the mass of the building's support to launch myself upwards. The man fired, reacting with impeccable timing and aim, but he hadn't expected the metal leg. A bullet bounced off of it, but I felt a flare of pain in my side as I flew through the air, presumably ricochet. Soaring across the rooftop, I put down my right arm to break my fall, misplacing it as I rolled over the roof, crashing against one of those weirdly large dinner plates.

"Shiiit… that hurt." I groaned, slowly standing up as people yelled on the streets below, and a massive cloud of dust filled the area, caused by Hookwolf's burial. I'd escaped for now, but I'd need a new place to rest and recover. I explored my side, feeling a wet throb where the bullet had glanced me. I could ignore the pain for now, but that would stop when the adrenaline wore off, and I'd have to either find a doctor or do emergency surgery on myself.

Really, really wished I'd paid more attention to biological transmutations right now. Someone like Dr. Marcoh would've been able to solve this with a single circle. At least my ribs weren't broken.

That, of course, was when the universe decided to make my day even worse, as the masked gunman appeared out of nowhere, hovering in the air to the side of the building.

"What the… That's just unfair!" I exclaimed, quickly transmuting a wall between us as the man aimed his pistol at me. His line of sight didn't remain blocked for long as he soared through the air, but the cloud of debris from the collapsed building gave me a new idea as I transmuted the roof beneath me, turning tarred concrete into dust.

No matter how darn impossible this guys' Alchemy was, he wouldn't be able to shoot me if he wasn't able to see me.

Secure in the knowledge that he'd be occupied for a few more seconds I legged it, running through the rubble, away from the scene of battle and into more populated territories as everything was smothered in a massive dust-cloud.

Half a minute later, my stumbling, coughing gait finally brought me out of the dust-cloud, into yet another alleyway, this one a bit closer to the more populated areas of the city. I caught my breath for a bit, taking the time to look at my surroundings. Dumpsters filled with garbage, and a few storefronts that were either empty or barred with metal. In the distance, I could hear sirens similar to those that had heralded the arrival of the State Alchemists yesterday, so someone had noticed what was happening here. Question was, who? The people I'd been fighting hadn't been all that professional, but they definitely had some sort of high-level Alchemical backing behind them, what with the steel Chimera and the… whatever kind if Alchemy provided flight. I really wanted to figure that one out.

Something glinted in the corner of my eye, and I moved as fast as I could, a bullet striking the steel of my arm. The hell?

"Darnit, how did you find me you masked dumbass!" I yelled out, getting ready for a fight as my enemy stepped out of the cloud of dust. I was so sure I'd managed to lose him. What had I missed?

"You shouldn't sell the Empire short, we have our ways," he replied, his finger on the trigger.

I transmuted the floor before he could fire, this time breaking up the street, pillars of stone randomly rising up, throwing my enemy off balance as I ran for him. He leapt from the platform beneath him to another in a manouvre he'd basically copied from me, and as I tried to bring up my arm to block a potential attack, my foot slipped on the stone beneath me.

Slapping my hands together during my fall, they touched the ground the moment the man fired, bullet bouncing off of a quick barrier between us.

What was he going to do next? I had absolutely no idea about this guys capabilities. He was obviously a sharpshooter on the level of Riza, he could fly, he could dance around like he'd studied under teacher, and he had some sort of way to track me, so what was he going to do next?

Do a somersault over my wall, apparently. He appeared above me with a backflip, flying high over the barrier as I transmuted the ground beneath me. If this street was the same as any other in the city then…

"Gotcha!"

As the man came to the ground in an effortless three-point landing, I broke the water pipes running beneath the street, surprising him with a blast of sewage water launching into the air from below.

He was blown of his feet, and as he tried to regain his footing, I jumped on top of him, throwing the gun out his hand with a strike of my arm.

"Tiny fucker!" he shouted, trying to hold me off with one hand while the other went to a knife on his belt, and one of his feet tried to kick me.

I blocked the foot, his shin striking against metal as he cried out in surprise, and a quick one-two with my fists got through his guard and into his face, taking the fight out of him.

"Pfhew," I spoke, standing back up and wiping the sweat from my brow. That had been close, and I wasn't out yet. People were yelling in the dust-cloud behind me, and the wound on my ribs was bleeding badly. I stumbled through the remains of the street, away from the downed man, my legs barely able to stay beneath my body on the rocky, broken up terrain. Had I lost that much blood, or was something wrong with my balance? Had I taken a blow to the head so hard I'd forgotten about it? I stumbled through the alleyway into a now-empty street next to it, when a vehicle suddenly braked in front of me. Fearing another enemy, I looked at the driver, and… "Winry?" I asked, but she ignored it, instead throwing open the sliding door of the van from her position in the driver's seat.

"Rachel told me about you," the girl said. "Come with me if you want to live." 


	3. Chapter 3

**The Girl that knows Everything**

I breathed in through my teeth as the hot needle pierced through my flesh, the adrenalin gone from my veins.

"You know, I'm kind of amazed you aren't screaming right now," Lisa, the girl I'd initially confused with Winry, said.

"I've had worse," I explained. Sure, it hurt, but compared to the process of attaching automail?

"The metal arm?" she asked, although… something was off.

"It's attached directly to my nervous system," I explained. "Attaching that basically sets everything on fire, and it has to be redone whenever I need anything beyond surface level repairs and maintenance."

"And from the scars, you've had them for a while, so I'm guessing you needed refits for a growing body too?"

"Exactly," I replied.

"So who's this Winry girl?" Lisa asked, pouring a strange orange substance on a bandage. "Your girlfriend?"

"No," I told her. "She's not."

"Mechanic?" she guessed further, a stupid grin on her face.

"Bingo, she's the one that made my automail. Well, together with her grandmother at first, but she's been doing it alone for the last few years."

"Must be one hell of a Tinker then," Lisa said.

"Yeah, she's pretty much a genius," I bragged. Winry was the best. Smart, good with her hands, pretty, scary as hell, everything anyone could want in a woman. Not that I was interested in her.

"Gotta say, when Rachel told me she met someone, and I quote, 'weird but nice', you were not what I imagined."

"She thinks I'm nice?" I asked, very confused. Hadn't she tried to beat me up?

"She said it was all a misunderstanding, which… no idea how you did that. She still thinks Alec ate those dog treats on purpose."

"Do I want to know?"

"Was pretty funny if you're into schadenfreude," she said, wrapping the bandage around my torso. She said my ribs were bruised, but not broken, though I had no idea how she could tell. I really had to get more familiar with medical alchemy one of these days.

"So, I've been wondering," I started. "You've been helping me because… your friend thinks I'm nice?"

She took a step back, admiring her handiwork and my torso for a second before replying.

"Any enemy of the Empire is a friend of mine," she explained.

Empire… so my fears had been correct. Those guys, sloppily trained as they were, had been government forces of some sort, or at least they were some kind of authority. What did that make her? The plucky resistance, working together with people like Rachel and her Chimera to resist in what ways they could?

"I have to admit, I hadn't exactly planned on fighting them, but-"

"But you don't have a problem with it either," Lisa continued for me. "I figured."

"So, who exactly are they? I'm afraid I'm not too familiar in the area," I admitted. I could've bluffed, pretended I knew what I was talking about, but Lisa was smart, and she'd have figured it out eventually.

"Despite what you're probably thinking, they're not actually government," she explained.

"With a name like Empire?"

"They're more subversive than that," she continued, leaning back against a table, grabbing a piece of fruit from it without looking. "Apple?"

"Sure," I replied, catching as she threw me one, and taking a big juicy bite and watching as she took one from hers. On a closer look, it was uncanny how similar yet different she was from Winry. The same blonde hair, up in a tail. Just like Winry, she wore clothes that showed off her belly button, though hers fit the local style better. The rest though? Lisa's eyes were green rather than blue, her cheeks covered in freckles, and her mannerisms were very different. Winry was direct, knew what she wanted, and went for it. Lisa however, was much harder to pin down on what she wanted.

"So, anyway, Empire Eighty-Eight. Racial supremacists with influence, lots of influence. Not only do they have a finger in every criminal pie in the city, half the cops are working for them, and they own half of downtown," Lisa explained.

"But, they're criminals, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, but criminals with support, sad as that may be. Support in all layers of society, from the dockworkers to the biggest companies in the bay. Any cop arresting one of them has to first wade through his colleagues, and then hope the evidence doesn't get lost."

"So you've gone underground," I said.

"So we've gone underground, looking for ways to take them down outside of the law," she agreed. "Which is how I ended up on a team with Rachel and her dogs. I'm the brains, she's the muscle, and we have a few more guys for backup."

"She has more than one of them?" I asked, wondering what the others would be like. Brutus had been humongous and horrible, would the rest of the dogs be like that too? Or would one of them be crossed with a bunny or something else cute?

"Three of the big ones," she explained. "Though there's a bunch more dogs she's taking care of. She likes the animals."

"Three? And she made them?" I asked. Sure, I'd gotten off on the wrong foot with her, but even if I was being charitable, she hadn't come over as all that intelligent.

"She has her process," Lisa explained. "It's complicated."

"I'd love to see it," I said. Would it be some sort of automated transmutation circle? A way to offload the mental calculations?

"Later?" Lisa asked. "I should get to hacking this phone you brought along for some reason. Why'd you do that anyway?"

"Thought I could listen in on their radio," I explained. "But they stopped talking quite quickly."

"Yeah, they knew you were listening in, and they were tracking you. Kind of obvious that's how they found you, what with all the clouds of dust. I honestly thought it was Bakuda's doing."

"Bakuda?"

"Yeah, she's the one behind all those explosions all over the city. Nothing you have to worry about though. National guard's on it, and the government is angry enough they might actually do something about her."

"That's a problem around here?" I asked. I knew it'd been in Amestris's border regions, mostly due to a lack of army presence, and a local dislike of the troops. Understandable, after what had happened in Ishval.

"With half the government in Empire hands? Yeah," she replied.

"Darn…" I leaned back in the couch. This was just getting worse by the day if the local government was entirely corrupt. Sure, it meant I'd probably be able to bribe my way back home, but I still had no idea in what direction Amestris was, or how far away. With all the advanced technology, it was even possible I'd gotten displaced into the future somehow. The Gate had seemingly stopped time from moving, had Gluttony's artificial Gate done the opposite?

"Well, for now, you should probably get some rest," Lisa said, her glare reminding me of Winry when I'd gone and ruined my automail again, or worse, Maria Ross, just after the incident with Barry the Chopper. "Dealing with, well, whatever your situation is can wait until you've recovered."

"About that," I said. "I don't really ha-"

"An enemy of the Empire is a friend of mine," Lisa repeated. "You can stay here in my apartment for a while. I have a guest room with an extra bed, and busy days ahead of me. Having you here where I can easily check in on you is easier on me. You wouldn't want to impose and have me go out of the way when I have to refresh your bandage, right?"

"Fine," I replied, my sense of self-reliance beaten down and tied up in a corner by her speech.

"Now, for dinner, you ever have Chinese?" Lisa asked, holding up her phone like it would mean something to me.

*** A Short Story ***

"So, how was Rachel's little problem? New teammate?" Brian asked, turning away from the video-game he'd been playing with Alec.

"Doesn't look like it," Lisa replied. "And it's a bit more complicated than Rachel claimed it was."

"Big surprise there!" Alec exclaimed, turning around to lean on the back of the bench, feigning interest at their conversation.

"Small surprise actually," Lisa explained. "But I'm pretty sure that our metal-armed midget is actually an interdimensional traveler."

"Like, from Aleph? You think he watches anime?" Alec asked, and Lisa shook her head.

"Further than that. Looking at his mannerisms, I'd place him in a weird analog of early 20th century Europe, but one with powers that aren't quite parahuman abilities."

"What do you mean? If they're powers, they're powers, right?" Brian asked.

"Don't know. Could be someone like Othala obfuscating things, and I don't want him to figure out how much I know and don't know. Anyway, he's naïve to the situation here, and afraid of the authorities. Not enough that I can trick him into joining our team, but I should be able to aim him at one of our enemies anyway."

"What did you have in mind?" Brian asked. "Our alliance is making headway against the ABB, are we going to backstab one of them? Send the kid after the Protectorate? Because I don't think that last one will end up resolving in our favor."

"I was planning on sending him against the Empire," Lisa replied.

"On his own? Didn't he have to run from Hookwolf?"

"Well, I guess it's incorrect to say I'm aiming him at the Empire. I'm actually going to aim him at Kaiser's civilian holdings."

"Break the unwritten rules? Risky…"

"Through a patsy, and he wouldn't even know it was a no-no. Plausible deniability."

"Still seems like a massive risk for no real gain," Alec interjected. "I kind of don't want to end up on an episode of 'will it blend'."

"Well, we'd be taking the nazis down a peg, and if it explodes as spectacularly as I hope it will, the Protectorate will be keeping them busy while we're perfectly positioned to take what we want from the docks."

"Hold territory, you mean?" Brian asked. "Because I'm kind of okay in our current position."

"I was thinking more on the business side of things, financial manoeuvring, parahuman pressure to make sure the right businesses flourish, etcetera. The boss has been working on it for a while, and I think we could increase our income with a decrease in risk."

"Seems complicated, so I'll leave it to you guys," Alec said, turning back to his game, beating up a now uncontrolled fighter that had once been Brian's.

"You sure this won't bite us in the ass? Unlike you three, Taylor and I have family to think about. We can't just up and leave at a moment's notice if shit goes down."

"Trust me, this is the best way to deal with the situation. Besides, it's not like Kaiser doesn't already hate us, it's not like this could increase the chance he's coming after us after the ABB's dealt with, thanks to Rachel's actions."

"Fine," Brian lied, turning around. "Just keep our real names out of it."

*** A Short Story ***

I was, I had to admit, quite proud of my work. Not only had I figured out how the radio with images worked, I'd also figured out how make it switch between different frequencies. Furthermore, I'd broken it apart, inspected every single (dusty) component, and put them all back together again.

Only problem was, I now had two more screws than when I'd started, which could mean one of three things.

 _One, the technology involved in sending images through the aether defied the principle of equivalent exchange._

 _Two, the device contained a philosopher's stone somewhere within it._

 _Three, I'd goofed up_.

Immediately discounting the third option, I clapped my arms together, dismantling the device to, once again, try to figure out how it worked, where that damnable stone was hidden, and how they'd created it. After all, I'd seen quite a few of these devices in the city, and I wasn't convinced they'd all been made from actual human souls, the numbers on that didn't quite work out unless they attacked foreign nations only to power their televisions.

"Enjoying yourself?" Lisa asked as she entered, carrying two steaming mugs. She looked tired, like she'd spend the night running through the city to whatever the latest site of conflict had been.

"Trying to figure out how it works," I replied. "You have any idea?"

"Buy it from the store, plug it in," she said nonchalantly.

I should have expected the answer. After all, it wasn't like most people in Amestris knew the details of radio, telephone or Alchemy. Which, thinking of Alchemy.

"So that Victor guy, how'd he do it?" I asked, thinking back to my fight. Stuff had gotten pretty chaotic, but I was certain I'd seen the guy start flying all of a sudden.

"What, the jumping around?" she asked.

"Well, if you want to call it that…"

"He's a homunculus," she stated. "An artificial human created through Kaiser's Alchemical arts. He has an array of lesser superhuman abilities, though the most dangerous is his ability as a skill vampire."

"Skill vampire?" I asked, trying to ignore my incoming panic attack. More Homunculi? I'd assumed Hookwolf had just been a more creative version of Al, but where there was one Homunculus…

"He's able to take your abilities and make them his own, leaving you drained in the meantime. They come back after a few days, but…"

"So that's why I kept tripping? Because he took my skills?"

"Exactly," she replied.

"Wait, so this Kaiser can create Homunculi? Where did he learn that?" I asked. If I learned how they were made, It might contain a clue to their goals, or at least that of the ones in Amestris.

"I'm not sure," Lisa replied, taking out her phone and fiddling with it. "People like him are very tight-lipped about their sources, all the public knows is that there's been testing on animals."

She turned her phone around, showing a short video of some sort of room with a great amount of cages with small animals inside of them, animals that were obviously being experimented on, given the open wounds, and the few pairs that were surgically attached to one-another.

"You alright? Looking a little bleak, need something to eat?" Lisa asked.

"Just… just an upset stomach," I replied, thinking of Nina. "I'll be fine."

"Okay," she replied as she stood up, moving towards the little kitchen to make some tea. "You sure it's not an infection of some sort?"

"Nah, those antibiotics you gave me did the trick," I replied, leaning back in my chair. If Kaiser was creating Homunculi, if he was experimenting the same way Tucker had been, but on a massive scale…

"Anyway, you wanted to know how Kaiser got his knowledge, right?" Lisa asked, plonking a cup of tea down on the table in front of me while sipping her own.

"Basically? Creating Homunculi like that isn't easy, as far as I know."

"Well, it's complicated," Lisa said. "But it all comes down to the Sage from across the Sea."

"The Sage?" I asked. That sounded similar to the Sage of the East, or the Sage of the West, as he was known in Xing. A figure from ancient Xerxes that had taught the people of Alchemy. Of course, it was ridiculously unlikely for such a figure to only ever go to two countries, so places like Brockton Bay probably had their own mythology around the man.

"A Legendary figure that taught us the secrets to Alchemy, he appeared from over the sea some three-hundred years ago. Now, I'm not sure if this is true, but Kaiser's people claim that, due to their ethnicity, they are the chosen people, and that they received extra knowledge the rest of the people didn't."

"The Sage gave them knowledge of Homunculi?" I asked.

"That, and knowledge of how to create a Philosopher's stone," Lisa stated nonchalantly, rooting through her bags for something. "And it's pretty clear he has that, since he can just materialize metal out of nowhere."

"If he has the stone? Yeah, makes sense," I answered. "I met an old man once that had no idea what he was doing, but with a philosopher's stone became incredibly dangerous."

"Well, that's a good way to describe Kaiser alright. Incredibly dangerous, and even moreso with his minions. He's got twins that can shift in size, a guy with wind-based Alchemy, even someone able to take the pull of gravity away from boulders she draws her Alchemical symbols upon," Lisa said as she looked through a few files from her bag, absentmindedly explaining everything to me.

"Sounds like he has his own army," I said. Philosopher's stones required a sacrifice of human life to be created. Someone using them to create soldiers was exactly the type of guy you didn't want in charge of those soldiers.

"I never said my job was easy," Lisa replied, putting back her stuff and standing up. "Anyway, you probably shouldn't worry about this stuff. Not your problem after all."

"Right," I answered, sipping my tea.

"Anyway, I gotta go real quick, you stay here and heal up, kay?"

"Kay," I said, mimicking her slang. Almost as abruptly as she'd arrived, Lisa left again, taking her coat and her bag as she went through the door.

"I really don't understand girls…"

I stood up again, noticing a folder on the floor. It must have fallen when Lisa was going through her stuff. I grabbed it, and ran for the front door, but she was already gone when I opened it, and I had no idea where she was going, and no real way to contact her except waiting until she returned.

"Hope that wasn't important…"

I took another look at the folder, hoping it wasn't something vital when I noticed the picture on the cover. A man in elaborate metal armor, the symbol Lisa told me was a swastika emblazoned on its shoulderguards. This had to be Kaiser, the leader of the Empire. I wasn't able to read it, but…

I opened the file, rifling through it. Most of the text was useless to me, though I thought I recognized 'Kaiser' and 'Empire' every now and then, as well as 'Medhall', the name of his company.

The pictures were telling. The man stood next to his twin Homunculi while in armor, then dined with them at normal size later on wearing formal-wear. Then there were the images of what Medhall was doing. Underfed dogs in cages, vials filled with blood, chemicals processed on an industrial scale, interspersed with symbols that looked like the local alternative to Alchemical symbols.

It was everything I'd expected and worse, and I didn't think being able to read the text would make him look better.

Someone had to do something, and it looked like Lisa's people needed all the help they could get.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Guy with the Dragon tattoos.**

"You think he's comatose?" a voice said.

"Nah, he's obviously just asleep, just shut up for a second. If you listen closely, you can hear him saying 'food'," a second voice added.

"At a time like this? In the middle of the street? How does he do it?"

"Hey, you two! Grab that new recruit and put him in the van, or do you want to explain to the boss why we're late?!" a third person called out.

"Right. Well, time to damn our fellow man," the first voice said.

"Look dude, I have a wife and two children, I can't afford to take the high ground here, so don't try to guilt-trip me."

"S'just…" one of them lifted him up by the legs, the others by the arms.

"Hey guys, where are you taking me?" Ling asked, still sleepy, his stomach rumbling.

"Bakuda's lab," one of them said. "I'm sorry, but… a man's gotta live, y'know?"

"Bakuda? Never heard of her, she got food?" Ling asked.

"Sure buddy, all the food you'll ever want."

"All-righty then," Ling said, jumping out of the two men's arms, and running for their vehicle. "Time to get some food!"

The men that had grabbed him looked in his way with amazement on their faces as Ling stepped into the back of the van, now surrounded by depressed, crying people.

"Your funeral…" one of them, the one with a bandage around his head, though he couldn't quite tell their voices apart that easily, said.

"Bring me to the food!" Ling yelled as the door of the van was closed, the vehicle accellerating and moving through the street.

"You guys don't look too happy about the free food," he eventually said, looking at his fellow captives.

"How can you think about food at a time like this?" one of them asked. "Don't you know what Bakuda's going to do to us?"

"Actually I don't!" Ling supplied cheerily. "Mind enlightening me?"

"She's gonna put a bomb in our brain!" one of them cried out.

"Sounds bad," Ling said. "Why'd you get in if you knew that? They force you?"

"No, I always wanted my head to explode," another one replied, summoning up his last reserve of sarcasm.

"Well, guess you lucked out then," Ling said, standing tall. "Cause I'm going to rescue you all and take down this Bakuda person!"

His stomach rumbled, the sound far louder than that of the van's engine.

"You know, after I get some food in me, heh."

*** A Short Story ***

As the van stopped, and two armed men wearing silly colors threw open the door, and Ling jumped out.

"Hey everyone, heard ya got food here?"

Most of them looked on in amazement, as Ling walked on to the lady obviously in charge. Wearing a strange mask over her mouth and large goggles, as well as what looked like a doctor's coat of some sort, smeared with grease.

"You the gal in charge here?" Ling asked.

"Ah, we have a volunteer, good, gooood," she replied. "Put him on the bench!"

Two rather broad men stepped forward, thinking they looked self-assured, but Ling could sense disturbances in their Qi, ones he'd come to associate with insecurity, hidden or not. Both of them were armed, one with a club, the other with exactly what he needed.

Ling walked towards the second man, and as the guy tried to grab him, he stepped into his reach, placed a foot on the guy's toes, grabbed his arm, twisted, and within half a second, got himself a sword and a man crying on the ground.

Which meant six different guys were now aiming guns at him. Not that that worried him.

"So, let me get this straight. You kidnap dudes, put bombs in their heads, then force them to work for you?"

"Roughly the idea," the girl said, now in serious mode, her voice distorted by the mask. He could sense her life energy. It was strong, tainted with… something. Powerful, but distant. "So, what are you guys waiting for?"

The young woman's minions were scared, afraid, unwilling. She was the type of leader that would throw her people away, that would treat them as trash until that was all that was left of them. They were conscripted, and forced to obey on pain of death. Pathetic, monstrous, evil. He could feel their hesitation. These weren't killers, and most of them barely knew how to hold their weapons, even if one of them brought up the courage to.

There, a burst of aggression, but Ling moved before the man could turn thought into action. The bullet went through the space he'd occupied a fraction of a second ago, but he was already approaching his attacker, diving and twisting in his approach. Fear overwhelmed the man's meagre confidence, but there was always the danger of an accidental fire, and bullets didn't care how they were fired.

Three more steps, a slice to the man's arm and a boot to his chest, and his opponent was thrown to the ground, gun flying through the air as he grabbed it.

"Pathetic," Ling spoke, completely serious, one leg on top of his fallen opponent's. These people were the victims of their commander, and he didn't want to hurt them more than he needed to. "You call yourself a leader? These people aren't soldiers, I don't see a single man here that received any training, yet you make them fight your fights?"

"What, you think these are my soldiers?" Bakuda asked, a twisted glee moving through her body. This lady was crazy, that much was sure. "Because they're not," she continued, as she held out her hand in a dramatic gesture. "They're my cannon fodder."

She touched her fingers together, and Ling felt a wave of dread move through the room. _Right, bombs in their head,_ he thought, jumping away from the man he'd disarmed just as Bakuda snapped her fingers and the man's head started glowing, blinding light shooting out of it as Ling ducked around a corner, diving down with his hands around his head as he braced for impact, the intensifying light visible even through eyelids, arms and a wall.

Eventually, as the light stopped, he stood up again, looking upon the carnage in the room with white streaks in his vision. Not everyone had been as fast, or lucky, as he had been, and the people in full view of the light were clutching at their eyes, screaming in pain. Bakuda, noticeably, was nowhere to be seen.

"What a coward," he said, walking around the room. Luckily, most of the people in the van had been spared from the brunt of the impact. "Hey, can one of you get like, a doctor or something?"

The people inside were unresponsive, so he dropped the gun, grabbed a man with mostly healthy-looking eyes by the neck, dragged him out of the vehicle by the collar, and dumped him near the door.

"What… what do you want?" the man asked, looking at-

Right, the sword. It still had blood on it, so this guy was probably just afraid.

"Get in the car, drive these people to safety, see if you can get some doctors to come here" Ling commanded, cutting through the bindings on the man's wrists in a single slash. "I'm going to take down this Bakuda gal, and see if I can get some food out of it."

He turned back to the garage, walking past the blinded people. Not much he could do for them right now except take down their boss. Thinking of that, there was one door left open, quite near the lady's workshop, where she'd been holding court. Lacking any better option to track her, he… could quite literally track her Qi, he realized. Normally, that would be hard in a city this populated, but she'd had a distinct feel to her, something he'd be able to track with some effort put into it. Focusing his senses, he walked through the door, ready to find his prey.

*** A Short Story ***

Okay, so Bakuda had most definitely gone through the door, entered a second room, opened the back door and… left in some sort of vehicle, probably a motorcycle, given by the other vehicles standing behind the building. That, at least, would explain her rapid movement away from this place. If she kept moving, tracking would be difficult, his range wasn't as large as old man Fu's, and even he would have a hard time finding someone between all these people.

Another presence appeared above him on the roof, the same sort of vague wrong-ness to it. He looked up, only barely spotting the new presence when a second one appeared behind him.

He spun, shielding himself with his sword as he caught a knife-swing from the new man, then quickly jumping away. How'd he been snuck up on like that? First by the man on the roof, then by the guy in front of him.

He looked at his opponent, a man wearing a demonic mask, clad in all-black. Knives, grenades and other dangerous tools adorned the man's belt, and he kept himself almost perfectly empty of emotions, both externally and internally. Not an easy opponent, if he could completely hide his Qi and sneak up on him, and especially not when there was a second man up-

The second (or first) presence disappeared all of a sudden, completely disappearing as the remaining man held his knife out in a fighting grip.

"I guess you have a bomb in your brain as well?" Ling asked.

The man stood still for just a bit too long, then shook his head.

"Guess I don't have to feel bad about this then!" Ling replied, stepping forward with a quick stab of the blade as, halfway through his attack, another man appeared several metres behind him. He spun in place, confused by how yet another…

 _The Hell?_ he thought as what looked like an except copy of his opponent was standing behind him, throwing a kunai that Ling was able to dodge just as the first man stepped towards him.

A swing of the sword, this time not met by a blocking dagger but by a flying one instead. As his blade entered the man's flesh, Ling limboed under the knife that had been thrown at him.

He turned again, ready to face his original target, when his sword came loose with unnatural effort, the source of Qi having… collapsed into dust?

"This just gets weirder and weirder," he said, as the other enemy in the alleyway also disintegrated all of a sudden, replaced by a Qi pulse coming from the roof again.

Was this the same person? Flitting about unseen and leaving afterimages from his speed? No, that didn't make sense, and they wouldn't leave dust behind then. No, this was something else. Some way to move along the veins of the Dragon, the same way Alkahestric techniques could?

Didn't matter, his enemy was dangerous, and he'd need to defeat the man. Those movements and the afterimages made him highly unpredictable, though his lacking skill meant that, if Ling saw him coming, he'd be able to win.

The man grabbed something from his belt, took out a pin, and threw it at Ling as he leaped onto a dumpster, then slung himself up a drainpipe, swinging himself over the edge of the roof right as the weapon went off, causing an explosion.

Not the type to give his enemy the time recover, the man with the mask appeared on top of him, swinging a short blade Ling barely dodged with a roll to the side. Then, as he tried to stand up, another version of his enemy appeared behind him, and while Ling was able to block the blade, the previous ninja flung his body into him from behind.

"Damn you're annoying aren't ya, you emotionless bastard," he said as he managed to roll further away, both his enemies crumbling into dust as he noticed a new Qi appearing to the side, some distance away. _Knives again? Or another one of those bombs?_

A knife flew at him, almost effortlessly sidestepped. This man really relied on his ability, unlike that little pipsqueak, who could actually fight rather than just perform alchemy.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" Ling asked, dodging another knife, then dashing forwards to kick a bomb away. As he said it, he felt some anger appear in his enemy, but as a second Qi pulse appeared behind him, the man's emotionless mask returned.

Ling dashed towards the newest body, ready to take the fight to the enemy. Hurting the man's copies obviously didn't work, so he'd have to reach him before he moved again.

Another knife, followed by a grenade he ran past, and his enemy moved again, onto another roof.

"What's the matter, you scared?" Ling asked, dodging a knife as anger showed in his enemy.

 _Above,_ he noticed, turning as the man appeared above him with two bombs in his hands, completely emotionless again. Was he getting his emotions wiped somehow?

As his enemy dropped, a new Qi pulse appeared some distance behind him, and the enemy in the sky pulled the pins on his grenades. "Suicide bombing without the suicide?" Ling asked, diving away, throwing himself off the side of the roof, landing painfully in a dumpster as yet another copy of his enemy appeared before him.

"You really have some messed up Qi, you know that right?" Ling said, noticing he'd dropped his sword somewhere in the chaos.

The man stopped moving for a second, giving Ling a moment to climb out of the dumpster.

"Qi?" the man said.

"Y'know, life-force? The part of us that is part of everything? That which pulses through the Veins of the Dragon? Your outfit looks pretty Xingese, so you gotta have heard about it, right?" Ling asked.

"This is a trick," his opponent stated, coming at Ling with his blade again.

Ling ducked beneath the strike, hooking his fingers through the loops attached to the bombs the man was carrying on his belt, pulling and dashing away.

His opponent turned his blade around, the razor-sharp steel cutting through his own gear, and he reappeared on the roof the moment the belt was loose, not taking the quickly exploding weapons with him.

The weapons exploded, and as Ling shielded his eyes from the flash, he felt his opponent take advantage of his moment of weakness, appearing behind him. He blocked the strike, grabbing the man's fist as another figure appeared on yet another side, this time throwing several blades at once, which were met by the flying body of the clopy. Less than a second later, another copy appeared in brawling range.

There was a pattern, Ling knew, but it was hard to figure out. His opponent weaved ranged and direct attacks together, but it was difficult to predict up front, and he was usually fast enough that everything Ling hit was dust, and he had no weapons to properly defend himself at yet another sword slashed just above him, cutting through a strand of his hair.

"Hey, You're supposed to use scissors!" he taunted, trying to figure out the mechanics. He intercepted a flying knife, catching it in mid-air at the cost of a small cut to his fingers, but it disappeared into dust. Whatever the man had on him when he reappeared was turned into dust, and if he lost it before that point, it didn't come with or disappear, so…

As he was attacked from two sides, he drastically looked around before finding his target, the pile of dust left behind when he'd thrown a copy to shield himself from daggers. Diving for it, he saw the glint of steel he'd expected, grabbed it from the ground, then blocked a blade with his new weapon.

These had been thrown before the man had moved, though from his opponent's hesitation, he'd forgotten about that little detail.

Another enemy behind him, but this time with more hesitation. His opponent had learned to respect his skills, even if it was difficult for Ling to actually hit him.

Two more versions of his enemy appeared next to each other, striking in tandem as a third appeared and threw his knife. Ling blocked one blade, threw himself against the other attacker, then turned in mid-air to have the flying blade lodge itself in the clone's back again as another Qi pulse appeared.

Moving lightning fast, this new Qi pulse, with the same strange taint as the other two he'd sensed, moved towards the distant enemy, and from the sound of it, launched a pulse.

Moments later, the two enemies crowding Ling had disappeared into dust, and through the cloud, he could see a man clothed in red laying waste to his opponent, punching the man's masked face roughly twenty times a second.

"Whoa," Ling said as he once again felt his opponent move, leaving a copy behind to be pummeled into dust while the new version stood on the edge of a nearby roof.

"Hey, he's over there now!" Ling yelled out, pointing at the roof. The man in red looked at him, then at the roof he was pointing at, but at that point, another Qi signature had appeared further away.

"Though I think he's gone now," Ling added with a smile.

"You can track him?" the new person, a young man by the sound of his voice, said.

"His Qi moves with him," Ling replied. "And it's pretty distinctive, weirdly empty."

"You're a cape then? The man on the phone wasn't very clear about things."

"Cape? Nah, this is obviously a shirt, why you asking?" Ling said, pointing to his open shirt with his bloody fingers.

"Doesn't matter, we can handle that later, is there anyone else around? Dauntless is on his way, and there are ambulance in reserve and-"

"Some guys with burned out eyes inside or something," Ling replied, not wanting to wait until the man was done with his rapidfire sentences. "Oh, and bombs in their brain, that too. And I guess at least one of them didn't survive his boss's attention. Bad boss, that Bakuda girl, not at all how you should treat your underlings."

"So no combatants?"

"Maybe that shifty guy if he comes back, but otherwise no," Ling said. "Why are you asking, you the local military or something?"

"Sort of? I'm Velocity, Protectorate East-North-East," the man answered.

"Ling Yao, future Emperor of Xing," Ling supplied in return. Velocity got puzzled, but got over it quickly.

"Do you require medical attention?" he asked, just as Ling's stomach supplied a helpful grumble.

"Nah, mostly just some food. I'm starving."


End file.
